Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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388. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade if his attention has been drawn to the current Israeli policy of detaining Palestinian children in prisons; if he condemns this policy; if he will raise this matter at the EU Foreign Affairs Council; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44822/14]

Charles Flanagan (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)
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Reports of the systemic mistreatment of Palestinian children in the Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem are of deep concern and an issue on which Ireland has been active for some time.

In October 2013, during the universal periodic review of Israel’s human rights record, Ireland expressed this concern and urged Israel to fully implement the recommendations of the February 2013 UNICEF report, entitled “Children in Israeli Military Detention”. We recommended that Israel end urgently night arrests of Palestinian children, the admissibility in evidence in military courts of written confessions in Hebrew signed by Palestinian children, the use of solitary confinement and the denial of access to family members or to legal representation.

Similar concerns have been expressed by the UN Secretary General, e.g. in his report on human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory including East Jerusalem dated 22 August 2013. This issue was also addressed in recent observations issued by the expert-level UN Human Rights Committee which expressed concern at reports of ‘widespread, systematic and institutionalised ill-treatment of Palestinian children’ in detention facilities.

Bilaterally, our concerns regarding the detention of Palestinian minors have been raised as part of our ongoing dialogue with the Israeli authorities on the overall situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian population, both with the Israeli Embassy here and through our own Embassy in Tel Aviv.

The overall human rights situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including the treatment of children in detention, remains a matter of concern for my Department and will continue to be raised in the relevant multilateral fora, and to feature in the EU’s broader concerns about human rights in the area.

Similar concerns would exist in relation to the detention of children in many other states in the region.